I took 'em out to the torch repair place today. The owner came out and looked at
them all. One, two, three, same story: bad cutting tips. One had a big ding in
it, another had been dropped and was visibly out of round, another was badly scored.

He also looked at the O-rings and said they were fine.

So I ordered some tips, should be here in about a week, will post a summary.

GWE

Grant Erwin wrote:

I've been keeping my eye on surplus oxygen/acetylene gear locally and
picking it up when it's cheap, with an eye on reselling. I now have 3
cutting torch attachments all of which are high quality and all of which
seem to have the same problem. They pop and go out a lot. I haven't
replaced the tips, but I have cleaned the tips including the seating
tapers until they are really as clean as they'll get, by soaking in
vinegar and salt and gently rubbing with 3M pads. I have also used tip
cleaners to try to gently get as much junk out of the preheat holes as
possible. I don't know of a good method to clean the seats themselves,
though. This is the hole in the actual torch head. It would seem to
require some special tool to clean the seating tapers.

I believe the popping is simply from improper seating of the torch tips.
Is there another common cause?

Any of you guys have a good method for doing this job?

By the way, Seattle is blessed with a great torch repair place, Hansen &
Miller in Ballard, but they are expensive and so are new cutting torch
tips. That's why I'm trying to do this by myself.

These are all real nice torches or will be once they are fixed.

Grant Erwin
Kirkland, Washington